


The Land Fit for Royalty

by nimmieamee



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:25:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: In another universe, Ronan retired to the Barns to dream.In another universe, it wasn't a happy ending.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written pre-TRK, not terribly happy throughout though there is a glimmer of hope at the end. Read carefully.

Mornings at the Barns, when everything was damp with dew, the air heavy with wild plum smell and rotted leaves, the house teeming with the living and dreaming -- that was when the wild king would awaken. 

It was a problem for Ronan. The king could have done it a little later in the day if he was going to do it at all. 

"You say that, but when we don't see him right away it's always worse," Matthew said nervously. 

They picked through what should have been the forest at the far edge of the property. Should have been. Ronan had poured so much into the king that the king was the land and the land was the king. And since the king was also the air, the water, the igneous foundations beneath the dirt, then all that got rolled into the land as well. Definitions made no sense. The forest should have had boundaries, but it didn't. Where the Barns ended these days -- who knew? It just went on, unless Ronan felt like putting a stop to it, which Ronan didn't, exactly. Sometimes Ronan didn't have it in him to care.

Matthew would complain that it was a pain to drive back to the city, back to his wife. He'd get in the car and reach the end of the road and it would become the start of the driveway, and he'd have to get out and walk to the house and ask Ronan to let him out.

"I bet Jessica doesn't even miss you," Ronan would say.

"She misses me," Matthew would say. "She loves me."

"Everyone loves you. That doesn't make Jessica special; it makes her normal."

"Do you want me to stay?" Matthew would say. "I'll stay if you say you want me to. I guess Jessica is normal."

"Don't be an asshole. She's your wife," Ronan would say.

Matthew came over whenever he could. He said he didn't like the thought of Ronan doing this alone. This was brotherly, but not entirely welcome. Matthew with a shotgun was a dubious prospect. Ronan had dreamed one with all kinds of safety features, stayed up late into the night researching, scared that the limits of his imagination would fail to safeguard against Matthew's ambling bear way with guns. 

Not that Matthew wasn't more effective than Ronan was. Ronan could not shoot the king. 

Picking through the forest, they came to the odd, bare strip of the previous kings. The trees dropped away on either side. The mounds rose at intervals. Many of them were so old now that wild flowers grew freely on them, and bunches of mint. Always mint. Ronan's fault. Ronan's problem. He wanted to tell Matthew to go home, but Matthew wouldn't. Matthew knew he needed to be here. 

Ronan had poured so much into the king. He could not kill the king.

The forest beyond the burial strip was wilder, with pools covered in a delicate lacework of green moss. Some of the trees were wide enough to carve houses into. Once, Ronan had seen a house like that, one with a wide arch opening into nowhere and powerful carved columns reaching up to the branches. He'd backed away, because it'd had the stamp of the king. But now there was nothing like that, only the usual endlessly repeating relics of the Barns: Declan's ancient blue tricycle, copied at intervals, because Ronan had wanted to ride it more than anything when he was four or five. The shed Niall had torn down when Ronan was nine, first at twenty paces, then again at fifty, then again at seventy-three. He'd never been allowed to see the inside. Now he knew that if he opened one of the doors, it would be stuffed full of more memory-dreams.

The forest was all Ronan today. The king was not here, in the obvious place, where the older pieces of him lay. Today it would be a hunt. Ronan didn't like hunts.

"He'll be out on the other side of the pasture, maybe," Matthew said hopefully. "Or maybe down by the--"

"Maybe he's waiting in the house and we missed him," Ronan growled.

That had happened a few times. The results hadn't been pleasant. Matthew wasn't a good shot in close quarters. Matthew wasn't a good shot anywhere, but in the house it was worse.

"He might be down by the oak--"

"If he's watching us from the oak, then we're fucked," Ronan said.

It was true. The game was to find the wild king first. If he found them first, then that was no good, because Ronan would be useless. More useless than usual. Prey. The hunt needed prey. 

It was near ten when they made it out of the forest again. Ronan was beginning to develop a headache, like something coiled and wriggling was burrowed in his skull. 

"You're okay?" Matthew said.

"I'll tell you when I'm not," Ronan said. 

But he didn't say anything when it got worse, in the pasture, so that around noon it was like the wriggling thing was birthing larvae.

The king was nowhere near the pasture.

When the king woke Ronan -- came to Ronan right away -- that was the best Ronan would ever get. All Ronan's powers were his own when the king was new and not quite formed, and it was easy to overpower him, trap him, wait until Matthew came by to kill him. But the longer they went without finding him, the stronger the king became. 

The weaker Ronan became.

The king was not in the orchard. He was nowhere among the rows of fruit trees. He hadn't chosen today to rest among the perfumed, rotting plums that cushioned the ground. And the king was not by the oak. He might have been in the covered bridge, Ronan thought. He seemed to like that spot. He was boyish; he liked to look at the water rushing over the stones, rushing like power. But he wasn't there either. 

By three in the afternoon they had to eat something, and so they had to stop. They hadn't found the king yet. He wasn't anywhere.

"Remember when we didn't find him for three weeks?" Matthew said, as they trudged to the far knoll. "That was alright. Even though it was three weeks. And remember back when he first--"

He broke off. Ronan was holding his head in his hands. Even Matthew knew what that meant. 

"We're going back to the house," he said. 

Matthew was not supposed to be decisive like this. Modeled after a toy bear, he existed to be loved until he was ragged, to chase nightmares away. Jessica also liked to dress him up and stuff him full of food at midday parties, her friends clustered around him like human dolls. Jessica was one of Declan's finds. Being one of Declan's finds, she never indicated outright that she resented Matthew coming to the Barns when Ronan called. Ronan suspected that Declan had told her everything she needed to know about Matthew at some point before the wedding and the three kids. Probably. Maybe. He didn't know. He never talked to Jessica. He never talked to anyone, really, except Matthew and the king.

He blinked. Above him, the summer sky of the Barns burst into brilliant gold, then purple. Matthew appeared. For a moment, he was very young -- young and new. His eyes, Ronan thought vaguely, were sewn-on buttons. 

-

He came to in the house. He heard Matthew lumbering through the kitchen. At first he thought it must be the king, but the king never made that much noise when he moved. It had to be Matthew, huge and round, golden from the top of his head down to the fuzz on his arms. Safe.

Ronan tried to get up and couldn't. He made it halfway, far enough to catch a glimpse of himself in the round mirror on the far wall, then fell back again. His head hit the worn couch cushions. Above him he saw the curious wood ceiling with its wooden stars set into the pattern of dark wood slats. Dream ceiling. Ronan staggered upright and this time stayed up, and the glimpse in the mirror stayed caught. He'd lost more weight. His cheeks had deep grooves, the bones in his face too severe. His hair was too long. When he put a hand up to it, the hand shook, so he'd have to ask Matthew to shave it close. Have to ask Matthew to shave him in general. He couldn't see his jaw. He couldn't see himself, really. That person was masculine and savage. Maybe it was Niall or maybe it was the devil. Ronan lurched towards him.

Matthew was there to catch him.

After, in the bedroom, he stared down at Ronan and said, "I'm staying."

Ronan didn't want him to. The last time Declan had come, they'd talked about it. Matthew was a dream, but he wasn't going to live like one. Matthew was going to go home to Jessica. It wasn't going to be like mom, not with Matthew. Never with Matthew. You made him, Ronan, but he has every right to go beyond you. He deserves a life, Ronan, no matter what you're choosing for yourself.

Sometimes, when Ronan called for Matthew, Declan would be there with Jessica. And he'd pick up the phone and speak very carefully and deliberately at Ronan, but at Matthew too. Declan double-speak. Hello, how are you? You're fine, aren't you? You can take care of yourself? You've always given me the impression you could, anyway. Well, don't get upset. I'm just trying to make conversation.

Matthew saw through it every time and came anyway. But the calls still hooked into something fleshy and sick inside Ronan. He never wanted to lie, he never wanted to agree with Declan. But Matthew deserved his own life. When you made something, didn't it deserve its own life? What did you owe it?

Now, Matthew rummaged in the chest at the foot of the bed and produced a coverlet with a pattern of hummingbirds taking flight and turning into ravens. Ronan couldn't remember who'd dreamt it, whether it had been him or Niall. It seemed his, but the quilt was entirely new to him. Where the threads frayed they caught the light and glittered black with an edge that became peculiarly gold the longer he looked. Matthew tucked it around Ronan's ears. Ronan batted him away. Role reversal. Not right.

"I'll find him," Matthew said confidently.

"No," Ronan said.

He didn't think the king could hurt Matthew. He wasn't sure the king could. Matthew wasn't normal; he was like mom. He couldn't die, only turn off, a computer entering sleep mode. Presumably his body could be hurt, but even Ronan wasn't sure it would actually hurt him, and that wasn't the king's style. The king didn't attack. The king didn't need to. 

"You're only gonna get worse if I don't find him," Matthew said. He wrinkled his nose, a small child peering out of him. "You're getting worse faster. Aren't you?"

"No," Ronan managed.

"Yes, you are!"

" _No_ ," Ronan said. 

Matthew looked concerned, but dropped it. "Okay," he said. "Should I watch you while you sleep?"

"Fine," Ronan said. 

"You'll feel better when you've slept."

"Right."

"We can look for him when you wake up."

"Right."

Matthew settled himself into the chair next to the bed. He had his gun on his lap now. Ronan blinked and almost went out totally, but remembered at the last minute. 

"Call Jessica and the kids."

Matthew's turn to blink. "Should I? Do you want me to?"

"I don't fucking care," Ronan forced out. "But it's Jessica and they're your kids."

"Should I do it right now?"

"Do it when you miss them," Ronan instructed, sleep weighing down his eyelids. "Do it when you want. Just do it. Tell them you might be here a while."

"I always miss them--" Matthew began. Ronan didn't hear the rest. He was out. 

-

Ronan's dreams were formless whenever the king was around. 

At first it had scared him. Ronan had always dreamt the way he'd lived. Dreams to him were real the way pain was real, the way tasting blood was real. In the first grade at St. Ignatius, one of the other boys had claimed he couldn't remember his dreams. Ronan had stridently demanded he take back this lie, ignoring Declan's frantic head shaking in the background. After one of the Brothers intervened, Ronan was left to wait for his father's arrival in the rectory. Niall had talked him out of having to write an apology and taken him for a drive, but otherwise hadn't explained. So it was some time before Ronan had realized that not everyone dreamed the same way he did. Matthew dreamed like he did, like there was little difference and the dream approaching life, the best ones simply a second reality. Niall dreamed like that. Aurora did. Only Declan did not, and when the only worthwhile universe had been the Lynch family, that had made Declan the aberration. 

"I think I had a marvelous dream last night," Gansey had reported once, shortly after Ronan had first met him. It had been a warm day. They'd been outside on the grass near the humanities building, and Gansey had been scribbling something in his notebook. "It was the kind of thing I'd like to remember forever. But of course I've forgotten most of it. It was hazy anyway."

Now, with the wild king about, Ronan's dreams were hazy too. Gansey was before him again, but his edges were indistinct, and Ronan had the sense that he was wearing Declan's face. The scene around him glimmered into being: the interior of the Camaro, not because it looked like it or because Ronan could see it, but simply because Ronan felt it to be true. In the seat behind Ronan was Adam Parrish, and Ronan was acutely aware of him and yet scared to turn around and confirm. He might disappear. Adam was not Gansey. He could not be caught and held, not even a small part of him. 

Blue was sitting on the other side behind Gansey, in the car window, heels kicking against the seat as her upper body dangled out of the car. She tapped the top of the Camaro and she was happy, Ronan could tell, and he heard himself egging her on. They all were. 

"Don't," someone else said worriedly. Ronan couldn't see who the speaker was or what they looked like. 

"I'm not listening to you," Gansey said. 

"Not listening to who?" asked Adam. 

His voice made Ronan shake. Ronan woke up. 

The king was sitting in Matthew's chair. He had unbuttoned part of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. Ronan caught the tan skin at his chest and forearms and held onto that. It was hard to look away from the king. It was unwise, too. 

The king was not looking at Ronan. He had his nose angled towards the window. He looked so alive that Ronan felt anxious and grateful.

"If you don't do it, then I will," he told Ronan. He said it without fuss, without any special threat, simply with power. It was an order. 

Ronan tried to remember what the king wanted. What didn't he want? He took what he wanted. There were more important things to address. 

"Where's Matthew?" he asked.

"He was calling his family," said the king. He wrinkled his nose. The king understood certain concepts very well, Ronan had learned, but family was not one of them. The king was wild and free, a spark Ronan couldn't contain. Ronan wasn't sure he wanted to contain him. Mostly he wanted to know about Matthew.

"Where is he now?"

"Does it matter?" the king said. "Here's what matters: I want it. If you don't get it for me, then I'm going to take your powers and dream it myself."

"What?" Ronan said. He still felt weak enough that it took his brain a moment to line up the king's words, to understand the honeyed voice and glacial tone that the king used to make his point clear.

"My car, Ronan," the king said. He looked at Ronan with some contempt. Ronan understood that that the longer he lay in bed, weak and insensible, the more he was wasting the king's time. He lurched up in half-apology. His muscles protested, and when he caught sight of his hand on the bird coverlet he marveled first at the sick pale color of it and next at how thin it was, and then a thought hit him.

"Did you make this?" he asked the king, passing his hand over the coverlet. He hadn't recognized it because it wasn't his. It was like Ronan, but not quite -- it was a brother. The royalty of it, the freedom and the unsafe glimmer to the ravens. That was this wild boy sitting in front of him, unaging and undefeatable. 

"It's tedious, learning how to do it," the king said. "It takes practice. Small. I hate starting small." 

Ronan had to agree with that. 

"I was always going to learn, though," said the king.

Confident. A poor word for the king's best quality, for the undyingness of him, for the assurance that no matter what happened he had this wild kingdom -- Ronan's wild kingdom -- because he had Ronan. And he would always recur. Rex mortus est, vivat rex.

"My _car_ , Ronan," the king said again.

Ronan took a breath and then nodded. Satisfied, the king finally turned the full weight of his gaze to him. He was so young that it made Ronan jittery. Handsome, real. One tanned hand grasped Ronan's shoulder and helped him out of bed. Ronan stumbled, and the king righted him easily. For a moment Ronan stared at his own bare foot with its branching veins, there on the floor next to the king's worn, familiar shoes, the tan strip of his calf under his cuffed khakis. Then the king had him walking to the door and down the stairs. He kept a firm grip on Ronan's upper arm, not cruel but simply entitled, handling Ronan the way he might nudge a dog in the right direction. 

"You want it because I'm keeping you here?" Ronan said.

"I want it because I want it," the king said easily. "But if I get it, I can leave."

As soon as he said it, Ronan knew it was true. The king had the same skill he did. If he wanted something to be, then that thing was. Secure, untouchable, and bold, the king had seen something entirely unexpected: what was Ronan's was his as well. And wasn't that right? This wild boy couldn't have _nothing_. Every inch of him screamed that he was to have everything, he was never to lack or want.

He brought Ronan to the back porch and let him drop, exhausted, into a chair before the driveway. Ronan's white-knuckled fingers gripped the tattered cushion underneath him. 

"Go get it," the king instructed. He pulled himself up carelessly onto the porch rail, reaching up one hand to the roof for leverage. He looked precarious and completely comfortable. He made Ronan heartsick. Suddenly, Ronan hated the thought of himself. Thirty next year. Next to the king he was so old. The king seemed to belong to some Ronan who'd never grown up.

"Go. Get it," the king said again, when it seemed Ronan was taking too long.

Ronan closed his eyes. If he did this, the king could leave. But he was young, powerful, and reckless. Entitled. He knew what he wanted. He knew where to get it. It would not hurt the king to leave the Barns for the wider world, but it might hurt the world. Sometimes Ronan thought of the summer after Gansey's death, thought of the king on his new quest, thought of what he'd done. And he knew that it was right to keep him here.

"No," Ronan told him, without opening his eyes. 

He felt the press of the king's thumb on his forehead, not hard, but a master's touch all the same.

"I'm not going to ask you again, Ronan. I'll keep draining you, and when I'm done I'll be able to do it myself. I don't need you."

Ronan didn't think the king could drain him totally. He could appreciate that the king would try, though.

"Where's Matthew?" he asked the king again, so that he wouldn't have to think about it, so that he could think about what was really important.

He felt the king's thumb press just a little harder between his eyes. It was a perversion of something, he suspected, but he couldn't figure out what. It made the king laugh without any humor, just contempt.

"I thought you'd want to be strong enough to come with me," he told Ronan, "when I go."

Ronan wanted. Oh, Ronan wanted. 

"I want Matthew," was what he said instead.

The king made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. Ronan felt the thumb drop away. It was replaced by a hand at his chin, tilting his face up. Not unkind, but not kind either. He knew that if he opened his eyes he'd see the king in the fading evening light, his hair dark and rich against the distant backdrop of plum trees beyond the porch, wild youth dripping from every inch of him. 

Ronan wanted. But he closed his eyes tighter.

"I'm going to have to take more of you to do this," the king said, matter of fact. "And you don't look like you have a lot more to give, Ronan."

Ronan's hand shook when he brought it up, but not so much that he couldn't flip the king the middle finger. He didn't have to open his eyes to know the king was rolling his eyes in response. That gesture on the king would be attractive, impossible to resist if he could see it.

He couldn't see it. He said, "Where's Matthew, motherfucker?" 

Even as he said it, he doubted the king would answer. The king didn't especially care about Matthew. But it wasn't just that he didn't hear an answer. It was what he _did_ hear. The shot from behind, and the strange aborted gasp from the king. A spray of liquid on his face and neck and shirt. Matthew's hand on his shoulder.

"Don't open your eyes," Matthew said worriedly, "Don't look. I'll bury him." 

Ronan didn't need to see this one to know what he would look like, to picture the blood on his button down shirt; his wide, confident hazel eyes; his war hero good looks. As Matthew moved around him, wrapping the body in some kind of sheet, probably, Ronan began to shake. He tried to stop but he couldn't. When he lifted his hands up and tried to grasp for the porch rail so he could stand, they were still shaking.

-

Matthew insisted on staying until Ronan started to get better.

He always stayed longer than he needed to. But this time was different, this time Ronan had lost strength so quickly that even Matthew felt it. Ronan could hear him calling Jessica in the other room, speaking to her with a an urgency in his voice that didn't belong there. It cut. Matthew had been Matthew for so long, lovable and uncomplicated, that Ronan could feel this like a crime. He'd changed Matthew somehow. Infected him with worries. He hadn't meant to. It had just happened. 

The first day after Ronan couldn't seem to stop shaking, shivering, feeling cold when he shouldn't. Matthew wrapped him in blankets and refused to take a pair of scissors near his head. He said Ronan would probably give a sudden jerk and he'd end up taking out his eye. This was a strangely well-reasoned point for Matthew and it annoyed Ronan. But the next day he was well enough to be still, and Matthew gave him a haircut and a shave. They cooked dinner together in the evening, neither very good at it though Ronan was probably better than Matthew, and they discussed mom. Matthew was the only one physically traveling to Cabeswater now. He was her favorite anyway. Thinking of her made Ronan ache with failure. Speaking of her was only a little better. 

Though Matthew didn't seem to mind the prospect of an eventual eternity with her in Cabeswater.

"I guess I'll miss the kids, though," he told Ronan, biting his inner cheek.

"Don't do that," Ronan said, tapping at it from the outside.

Matthew looked delighted at the gesture. 

" _Mom_ still does that," he told Ronan meaningfully. 

"I know," Ronan said quietly. "Mom's not like you. She's not dealing with anything. No reason for her to change."

And, slowly, Ronan's dreams returned. His proper dreams, real dreams. Whatever conduit the king used to take Ronan's powers always snapped closed upon his death. Ronan just had to wait. Soon enough he'd be back to normal. More normal. He ate less in general these days, so the thinness of him wasn't going away any time soon. But he felt more like himself. In the mirror, there was a hint of wild youth to him now. Like whatever the king had drained away wouldn't, couldn't disappear for long. He chased it with his eyes when he caught sight of his own reflection. He told himself this was right. It was all in him. Longing for the king made no sense. It was all in him. The king never should have happened.

After a week, he started telling Matthew to go home. Matthew anxiously put him off. The phone began to ring, Declan or Jessica, and Matthew quietly and calmly ripped it from the wall, walked it to the pond, and dropped it in. Ronan watched him from the back porch. He selfishly pretended that this was right and natural.

After two weeks, Declan came.

Ronan couldn't seem to keep him out of the Barns. It was an erratic flaw in the kingdom's defenses. Matthew thought it was because he didn't really want to keep Declan out. But he did. It was just that the Barns didn't recognize that; some part of the place still obeyed its first creator, and Niall had never despised Declan, just hadn't bothered getting to know him, which wasn't the same thing.

Niall's comparative apathy had served Declan well. If he had known Declan, he would have seen what Ronan saw, which was that Declan didn't belong at the Barns. Stepping out of the car in a steel-grey suit, he was a tax assessor on holy ground. Ronan, sitting in a chair before the window, was suddenly every bit as exhausted as he'd been when the king was free. He saw Declan adjust his cuffs before walking to the house. Buying time, buying mental preparation. The last time he'd been here they'd fought. Ronan had wanted him to leave more than anything. The king had still been about and he'd thought Declan might have seen him. It had been during the bad three week period, the longest they'd ever gone without finding the king. Ronan had thought it couldn't get worse than that. 

But he'd had more strength then.

Declan stopped before the screen door and knocked stiffly on the lintel. Ronan hated the falseness of it, like he hadn't grown up here. He hated that he'd have to let Declan in himself, or else Matthew would have to do it. He didn't want Matthew to talk to Declan. Declan would say the right things.

Ronan went to the door. He leaned against the jamb without opening the screen. 

"Feeling better?" Declan said.

"What do you think?" Ronan said.

"You look better," said the steely politeness of Declan, the brother who hadn't seen him in about a year.

"Do you ever get tired of chasing down Jessica's husband for her?" Ronan asked. 

"She has three children she can't leave behind," Declan said. "Matthew has three children he can't leave behind." 

Not for you, anyway, said Declan's hand. It rested on the other side of the same doorjamb, settling in to wait for Matthew.

"Dad left all the time," Ronan said.

Something in Declan's eyes came unspooled, a small untamed sliver. It threw Ronan off. It had to be a lie.

"Don't be a piece of shit, Ronan," he said. "You want your nephews to have a dad like we had a dad? Is that why you can do this? Because you think that's fine?"

"There was nothing wrong with Dad," Ronan snapped.

Declan opened his mouth, then closed it. He brought his hand down and adjusted his cuffs again. To keep from having this fight. Again. Then he said, "It's bad enough they have an uncle who won't visit them."

"I call them. Someday I'll invite them," Ronan said. "Once I've dealt with some stuff."

"You want them to come here? Into your little kingdom? They'll pass," Declan said dismissively. "Some families live in the real world, Ronan. Matthew's does."

"Tell him that," Ronan said. "It'll be news."

Declan said, "He wants this. We made this happen for him. You agreed to it, and now you're going back on your word. Again."

"I'm not going back on my word," Ronan said. He wasn't. Nothing in him intended to keep Matthew forever. All of him wanted Matthew happy. It just wasn't enough. It wasn't ever enough. Not with Matthew, not with the king. But it was all Ronan had in him these days,

"Let. Him. Come. Home," Declan said. "Enough of this. You're pulling this trick three or four times a year at this point. He has a life."

"It's not a fucking trick," Ronan said. "It's not. Just because you don't know what it is--"

"Then tell me!" Declan said, hitting the door frame. "You're just like him; you've got secrets on secrets. You can't do family without them. You know what I have to tell people when they ask about you? You know who I saw, and I had to--"

"Declan's here?" came Matthew's voice, from behind Ronan.

Abruptly, Declan switched off his passion.

"Yeah. I'm here. It's time to come home. I'll be waiting by the car."

Ronan helped Matthew pack. 

"Call when you need me again," Matthew said urgently. "He's getting better at it."

"I know," Ronan said.

"You can't wait anymore, not even for an hour," Matthew said. "He's getting faster."

"I know."

"So call."

"You dropped my phone in the pond," Ronan reminded him.

"You can dream another one," Matthew said. "You can dream anything."

But the problem wasn't dreaming. It was un-dreaming. What Ronan's life needed was one dream less. The recurring dream: the king.

-

With the king gone, the new game was figuring out how long he could go. Ronan had managed almost a year once. It had been an alright year. He'd called Matthew a lot, called the kids a lot. He'd dreamt a racetrack and cars that raced themselves. He'd dreamt a dog made of mist and it had lasted a good few months, and he'd dreamt a solid dog and it had looked like it would be around a good few years. He'd dreamt seven cats that each had seven claws to a paw. Green mice. Horses with silver manes. Ravens to match Chainsaw, a whole family for her. 

Animals helped the most. The cars were alright, but one hundred cars in a row were just a forest of waiting teeth. Ronan had learned that long ago.

So for that year it had been animals. He'd even started adding to the sleeping herd. His cows came with the same damp brown eyes, but awake, alert. Golden-hooved and never sleeping, like he was correcting something bigger with their creation. 

But one day he looked at them and he thought of Adam Parrish. 

It had been five years since Ronan had last left the Barns, at that point. And there were no _people_ around most of the time. Ronan had graduated high school with no one to invite home except for Matthew. After finding Glendower there really hadn't been anyone else. Friends were hollow spaces he stumbled on, indistinct markers like thumbprints left in clay. The sight of nothing near the cows, nothing where Adam Parrish should be. And a very small nothing maggot stomping along to keep up with him, criticizing his every thought. And nothing picking through the cars with impatient distaste because none of them were the Camaro.

It was an avalanche. It was like a day given up for lost, the way the nothing spaces built and built and got worse and worse. Only instead of a day it lasted for a week, then a month. Calling Matthew didn't make it better. The older he got, the less Matthew could do for him. Matthew was meant to be loved, but by loosing him on the world Ronan had allowed others to fill him up to the brim. He was overflowing with love. His first son's love, Jessica's love. Even Declan's, whatever that was worth. 

And Ronan wanted so much to have another person there.

One morning, he'd woken and known. He'd failed. The king had come again. The king always came when Ronan really wanted him, and Ronan would always want him. Ronan had stepped downstairs and found the seven cats keeled over in the den, their energy sapped. The king had taken it. Ravens fell from the trees that morning. Chainsaw was resting in the bend of the driveway, asleep. Lost.

Before the king had learned how to drain Ronan, he'd learned how to drain the animals. It was all the same power source anyway. The king overloaded the whole system. The worst part was: Ronan kept recovering. But the animals never did. It was like the king had to take something irreplaceable every time, just to remind Ronan of the gravity of his crime.

Ronan didn't dream animals anymore.

This made it harder to keep from dreaming the king. But he tried. He dreamed a tennis court and a jerky, tennis-playing scarecrow to play against. He dreamed a second house and made the rooms identical to the first; no point improving on something that was fine. He dreamed food, of course, because the dreamed thing was as good as the real thing, and he dreamed a whole new orchard that grew pewter fruit, on a whim. He didn't dream alcohol or pills or anything like that; the second year after Glendower, he'd learned that taking anything like that only made him stupid enough to dream the king right away. But he did dream a river of iced coffee, running right through the older orchard. He was entirely too alert for the next week. He dismantled the woodshed and reassembled it. He built a second covered bridge. He discovered that he was bad at building things in this way. Didn't matter. He became too exhausted to be lonely. 

Matthew called punctually every Wednesday, the day Jessica worked late, and sometimes he put the kids on. Ronan always meant to ask him not to do that. When he hung up after talking to them, he could see plainly all the nothing in the corners, nothing he'd tried to crowd out with dream flowers that sang and dream desks that rattled and dream televisions, dream weather-vanes, dream pirate ships. 

All these dreams, and all that nothing creeping in around the edges. It made it harder to actually say that he didn't want to talk to the boys. He never said it. 

"You talk to mom?" Matthew would say, before hanging up.

Ronan would hang up.

In the kitchen, nothing prepared dinner. 

The Barns was stuffed full. Dream kingdom, wild landscape, a marvel of fruit trees and whims. Home. So why was it that he could see _nothing_ everywhere? Nothing was endless. A life measured in nothing, in the time you didn't spend with people, in the things you didn't do, looked like too long a life. 

And when he began to think like that, he always roused the king. 

-

"If he dies, I die," he'd said. "If we go, we go together."

-

This time it took three months. Autumn was curling around the Barns, a plume of smoke at the ill-defined edges of the property. But the Barns was resisting the season. It was heavy with strawberries and dream peaches, out of season and uncaring. 

Ronan woke and felt the familiar migraine. Outside, through the window, an elegant egret strutted through the driveway. Bobbed its head at the house. A messenger. In the distance, the plum trees had been set on fire. A message. 

Ronan had dreamed a replacement phone. It was supposed to be right by the bed. When he stretched out a hand, it wasn't there. He found instead a set of keys. Car keys. His hand scrabbled uselessly for half a second, scratching the surface of the wooden nightstand with the keys, as though it couldn't figure out the switch. 

His brain panicked in tandem with his hand, but then quieted. There was no time to seek out other ways of contacting Matthew. He'd just dream a new phone. He closed his eyes. 

He felt the press of thumbs on his eyelids. 

Soft. Then harder. Heedless. A little cruel, so that Ronan surged up and shoved. He hit a solid, warm chest. No give. 

The king laughed. 

When Ronan opened his eyes, the king was sitting at the foot of the bed, his legs a careless sprawl. He wore a t-shirt and chinos this time, and his feet were bare. Behind him, the window and the sky and the blaze from the orchard. His eyes had the same a peculiar quality of uncaring that permeated all the property. He was satisfied with the wreckage. He was young and vital. Ronan could hardly breathe when he looked at him.

He'd poured so much into the king.

"Why did you ask for me, Ronan?" were the first words the king had ever said to him. "You had a king and all his glory before you, and you asked for me."

"You _are_ my king," Ronan had said, scoffing. It had been such a stupid question.

Now Ronan had the king and all his glory before him. He was too tired to scoff about it, but his around the edges of his exhaustion there danced something else. Eagerness. Again, he wanted. Even though he knew it was wrong, and that the king was wrong, and that the king wasn't what he looked like -- in fact, these days it was hard to know if he wasn't anything more than the lost parts of _Ronan_ \-- even so.

He wanted. 

The king seemed to know it. 

He came forward and in an instant he was holding Ronan's jaw. His fingers were cool and steady, and his tongue hot. He kissed like he owned Ronan. It knocked Ronan's head back against the bedframe. Ronan only vaguely processed it. He thought wildly that the king made him synesthetic. He smelled cars and saw what he thought was a burning wreck.

But when he blinked he saw that it was just a heavy branch snapping off of one of the plum trees. 

Cursing, he pushed the king off and jumped out of bed. Wild laughter followed him down the stairs. When he made it to the porch, every single tree was lit. He blinked, and the sky seemed in the process of retreating from the flames. The egret stretched its head lazily at the burning plums. Ronan shoved at it, trying to get it to the other side of the house. It only winked one round golden eye at him in response. 

"Should you put it out, or should I?" asked the king. He waited now just before the screen door, right where Declan had been only a scant few months before. Unlike Declan, he looked like he belonged. Or else the Barns looked like it belonged to him. 

The king looked like that everywhere. 

Ronan closed his eyes and tried to think. Firetrucks. Fountains. Rain. Could he dream rain? He felt more suited to a hurricane. He was too exhausted for a hurricane. 

The king's hand the back of his neck. A collar.

"I'll just do it," he told Ronan easily. Ronan was hit with another wave of exhaustion. When it passed, he saw the plum trees again. They were whole. There was no fire. There was nothing to show that there had been a fire. Only one smoldering branch on the ground, like a piece of a past that had never happened. 

Ronan couldn't figure out how he'd done it.

"We're all on the same line, aren't we?" the king explained. "Like a ley line."

Yes. Him. The king. And all the dreamed things. The same conduit, the same soul.

"Well, if I could learn how to control you, then I think I can learn how to control this place," the king told Ronan. "It's all the same."

Dazed, Ronan blinked at him. The king had figured out how to reverse things. He was controlling his dreamer. He was controlling everything else, too. 

But what else could he do? The king was not meant to be a dream thing. Ronan had wanted so much more for him.

"Now," the king said. "I still want my car, Ronan." He looked briefly irritated. His hands guided Ronan down to the slatted wooden floor of the porch. Ronan sagged against one of the posts when he got there. Whatever the king had done to put the fire out -- to make the fire not have happened -- had drained Ronan considerably. 

"Will you do it, or shall I?" the king asked politely.

"You go ahead," Ronan managed, through his haze.

The king made a cold, annoyed sound. He said, "Very well."

And then Ronan felt strength leave him.

-

Ronan didn't know how long he stayed on the porch. Several times, he came to and it was night. It was night and there was half a Camaro. The front half. Then the front half and a Camaro with glass wheels. Then the front half, the one with glass wheels, and one that seemed to have no engine. Ronan laughed at that. Deja vu.

"Having trouble?" he called out. Tried to call out. His voice was trapped somewhere inside him and it was too much work to chase it out.

At some point, he slid out of position and found himself lying at the porch, looking at the mess of useless dream Camaros in the driveway. Some had doors that were large flapping raven wings, some leaked oil at an alarming rate, painting the driveway with a goopy slick like discolored blood. Some simply weren't orange, and that would never do. Ronan developed a crick in his neck, but was too weak to shift position. It took the king some time to notice that Ronan had fallen over, but when he did he came over and sat next to him on the porch step. He adjusted Ronan's head absentmindedly. The pain in his neck went away. 

"I keep trying, but it doesn't come out right," he said, biting his lip.

"Not as easy as it looks?" Ronan managed.

"No," the king said seriously. "No, it's not. So there's nothing to do but try again."

The king, like his predecessor, was not a quitter. He stood up and wiped his hands carefully on his chinos, then left Ronan on the porch. Ronan blinked and was out. Back. Out again. Back again. In the meantime the driveway crowded up with a line of Camaros: Camaros made of pulsing fruit flesh, like giant car-shaped oranges. Camaros that leaked more goop. Camaros that emitted violent, piercing boys' screams when the king turned the key in the ignition.

But the king had time on his side. Eventually, Ronan opened his eyes and found him gazing down, satisfied.

"Ready?" the king asked him.

Ronan blinked. The king was barefoot in what looked like a sea of goop flooding the driveway. He had a smudge of dirt below his collarbone. Handsome. Ronan's mouth was dry.

"I said I'd take you with me," said the king. "And I've done it. It's perfect." He stood back and gestured at something behind him. It was a grand gesture, and boyish. He grinned, and in his grin Ronan could see the pathway out of the Barns. 

Ronan and the king hadn't left the Barns in over ten years.

And he had done it. It was the Pig. Every inch the Pig, the way he was every inch a king. Ronan even thought he could hear the roar of the engine. 

No. That wasn't the Pig's engine. That sound belonged on a different car entirely, a much better behaved car. Though the squeal and shriek as it careened out of control did sound right for the Pig. The Pig wasn't known for reliability. 

Ronan might have thought this black Lexus would be different. But it skidded dangerously on the goop, the innards of the faulty Camaros. Dream refuse. It tripped up the new car. Ronan could see the driver fighting dangerously with the wheel. The Lexus whined, shrieked, barely missed the row of Camaros. The king turned, shock written on his handsome face, and the Lexus collided with him, mowed him down, then came to a stop, buried in the deepest pocket of goop just before the porch.

The driver hesitantly climbed out. His movements were jerky, shocked. He stained the legs of his elegant blue suit, wading through the Camaro slime to reach his victim. Ronan saw his face. It was carefully blank, like horror had taken him somewhere else. Slowly, Ronan's visitor kneeled before the body of the king.

"Parrish?" Ronan said.

"Gansey?" Adam Parrish said softly. Then louder. Almost like he couldn't even hear himself. " _Gansey_?"

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be its own fic, but the other chapters weren't working. I like this piece and think it stands decently on its own, though I'll grant you that it raises a lot of questions.


End file.
